The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7380 p733
17 December 2005

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Pharmacists should ask LPCs about smartcards

Community pharmacists should find out when their primary care trust will issue them with the smartcard essential for them to take part in the electronic prescription service (EPS) before they commit themselves to paying for the costs of the computer connection, pharmacy negotiators warned this week.

Community pharmacists are entitled to £200 a month — to pay for broadband and connection to N3, the national NHS network — as part of the EPS agreement with the Department of Health.

But to date only a handful of community pharmacists have been issued with the smartcard which acts like a security key enabling them to draw down the electronic prescription. The delay by PCTs means that pharmacists could find themselves paying for the electronic connection costs even though they cannot take part in the EPS.

Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee chief executive Sue Sharpe said this week: “Pharmacists will be unable to get the £200 connection allowance unless they have a smartcard from their PCT. If PCTs have no time scale for being able to issue the smartcards we don’t want pharmacists to get the connections up and running but then not be able to get reimbursed for the costs.”

The PSNC is baffled by the delay in issuing smartcards, although it has acknowledged that PCTs are under “immense budgetary pressures”.

Sue Sharpe said: “I don’t know what’s holding it up and I don’t want to speculate. Pharmacists should contact their local pharmaceutical committee to discover what their PCT timetable is on this.”

Failure of PCTs to issue smartcards is also hampering the provision of electronic medicine use reviews (MURs), she said. Although a lack of smartcards does not prevent pharmacists from carrying out MURs, it does mean they have to be carried out on paper which “limited their value” to GP practices which were moving towards paperless systems.

The need for pharmacists to be linked to the NHS was highlighted earlier this month by Labour MP Howard Stoate, chairman of the parliamentary All Party Pharmacy Group, in a letter to health secretary Patricia Hewitt.

He warned her: “Access by community pharmacists to the national care record system is essential if services such as medicines use review and independent prescribing are to operate to optimum success. Specifically, pharmacies and GP practices must have IT connectivity. Failure to achieve IT connectivity will hamper service improvements.”

A spokesman for NHS Connecting for Health said PCTs had been given guidance about issuing smartcards to community pharmacists. “Further detailed guidance will be available on this shortly. It is then anticipated that PCTs will begin the smartcard registration process.”

He said: “Guidance for community pharmacy contractors on what they need to do in order to be in a position to operate EPS will also be issued shortly. This will include sections on both smartcard registration and connectivity.”